Fangs of Peace
by TrueBloodedVampire
Summary: A slight change during the Mizuki incident leads to a massive change in Naruto's life. Now, he must continue to aim for his dreams all while hiding an even bigger secret than being a jinkurichi. Powerful!Vampire!Good!Naruto
1. Chapter 1

This is my first story that I am penning under this new account. It is a story that explores the times of Uzumaki Naruto as he endeavors to use the powers of the dark to bring the world into the light. To learn any more you will simply have to read the story.

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><p>Uzumaki Naruto walked into class on the day of genin team assignment feeling much different than usual. Normally loud and energetic, the boy kept his head down and moved to the back of the classroom, talking to no one, before sitting down at an open desk next to Aburame Shino and laying his head on his arms on his desk. This caused Shino to raise an eyebrow at the unusual behavior, but he didn't say anything as it wasn't his business and he didn't really know Naruto all that well outside of class and so it wasn't his place to say anything.<p>

Those that bothered to pay any attention to the young blond (few of them that they were) would notice a few of those differences. Aside from the obvious lack of his normal enthusiasm, the genin to be was wearing dark wrap-around sunglasses today along with his usual orange jumpsuit. On top of that, his mannerisms had been much more controlled and fluid than before when he made his way to his desk and the way he carried himself spoke of a mental tiredness more than anything else.

The few that cared to notice these things dismissed them as the blonde just being tired for once or some other nonsense, probably do to committing some ridiculous prank such as the painting of the Hokage Mountain he had done a couple of weeks ago just before the graduation exam.

Shortly after Naruto sat down there was a commotion as two kunoichi entered the classroom and loudly argued over who got to sit next to the class heartthrob and rookie of the year, Uchiha Sasuke.

Previously, Naruto would have taken great interest in the proceedings as he had been infatuated with one of the girls, a pink haired bookworm named Haruno Sakura. Today though, the blonde had other things on his mind that were much more important and interesting.

A few minutes later the class settled down the chunin teacher of the newly graduated class, one Umino Iruka, began reading off the list of genin team assignments. Naruto kept an ear out for the assignments, but was only vaguely interested in who was on his team.

'Sasuke and Sakura is it?' the blonde considered somewhat apathetically. 'Both of them will probably ignore me. That will come in handy, I'm not yet strong enough to guarantee my own safety should it be discovered exactly how I have changed since that night.'

As the new teams slowly filtered out of the classroom with their jounin senseis, it became apparent that team 7, as they were designated, would be waiting awhile for their own sensei to arrive.

Naruto decided to use this time to practice manipulating his internal energies, and to continue experimenting with some of his newfound abilities.

Sakura was too busy bothering her crush, and Sasuke was too busy being bothered, to notice the strange way that the shadows on the floor were shifting around slightly.

After several hours of waiting, during which the blonde's teammates were somewhat unnerved by how quiet and still he had been, the door finally opened and a grey haired man with his forehead protector pulled down over one eye walked in. He introduced himself as Hatake Kakashi, their jounin sensei, and he told them to meet him on the roof.

He then vanished in a puff of smoke, causing Naruto's eyes to widen slightly as he stood up from his chair. 'I need to learn how to do something like that.'

He shook his head in an attempt to clear those thoughts and silently followed his new teammates to the roof to meet their sensei.

'I just hope that our new sensei isn't very interested in our lives outside of missions. That would make my life much easier.'

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><p>"So…" Kakashi began when all three of his new students had arrived and sat down on the roof in front of him. "Why don't you three tell me all about yourselves? You know, likes, dislikes, hobbies, dreams for the future, etc."<p>

'Of course', thought the blonde, resisting the urge to scoff, 'Of course it wouldn't be so easy. When has my life ever been easy?'

"You first Pinky" the elite jounin said as he motioned towards Sakura with his head.

She was slightly annoyed at being called out for her colorful hair which was one of her greatest prides in life, but resisted the urge to make a scene in front of her new teacher.

"My name is Haruno Sakura. I like… well my hobby is… err, my dream…" she trailed off again, staring at the last Uchiha with a blush and a little bit of drool.

"Anything you don't like?"

"Naruto"

Naruto frowned slightly, but didn't say anything. He had been reconsidering his affections toward his new pink haired teammate for the past two weeks, and had grown disenchanted by her because of her rude behavior and violent lack of respect towards him.

'It is just as well that she dislikes me' he thought, 'hopefully that will translate into a lack of interest in me which will help keep me safe for that much longer. Even if it's just for a few days, I will have that much more control if I need to defend myself…'

Kakashi was not surprised at the pink head's answer; he could have guessed the entire statement verbatim just from reading her file.

"You're next Mr. brood" the jounin said as he moved on to Sasuke.

The last Uchiha moved his disinterested stare to focus on Kakashi and said, "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I have no time for likes or hobbies outside of training. My goal in life is to kill one man and then restore my clan to its former glory."

Also a textbook Sasuke answer.

Kakashi turned to look at Naruto and waited for him to make his own statement.

Naruto decided that it would be less suspicious to just answer the question truthfully with answers that are unexpected than it would be to try and lie in the hopes of keeping as much as he could a secret.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like training and quiet nights relaxing out under the full moon. My hobby up till now has been to practice my stealth by performing pranks and running from the ANBU, but I have to find a new one now since as a registered shinobi it is a crime to flee from the ANBU for any reason. I dislike people who jump to conclusions, and those in positions of authority who decide to choose what is easy over what is right. I dream to see the day when all the lands can be at peace, and I wish to become Hokage in order to further that goal along."

Kakashi was intrigued by the blonde's answer. Technically nothing that had been said contradicted the file he had received, but he was caught off guard by how mature and deep the jinkurichi's views seemed to be. 'This one could be more interesting than I first thought.'

"What about you Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked, "You can't just ask us all that and then not tell us about yourself."

Kakashi favored her with an eye smile as he responded, "Yes I can." to which all three replied with sweatdrops.

"Any way, I'm somewhat amused by you guys so I hope you three can pass the final genin test tomorrow morning."

The three were taken aback and Sakura tried to argue that they had already completed the genin graduation exam.

'I always love this part' Kakashi thought as he prepared to break it to them not at all gently. "That was just a theoretical test to see if you could learn to manipulate chakra and had at least a modest talent for ninja techniques. It was only to weed out those who were completely unfit to become a shinobi."

"Well what does the test tomorrow screen for then?" Sasuke asked. 'I can't allow myself to be tripped up from even becoming a ninja by some silly last minute test.'

"Nice try Sasuke, but that would be telling! Besides, as shinobi you are supposed to be able to adapt to changing mission conditions and react accordingly. I will tell you this though; it will be an early morning practical so I wouldn't eat breakfast if I was you unless you want to throw it up. Meet at training ground 7 tomorrow for the test!" Kakashi waved and vanished in a puff of smoke as he finished his instructions, leaving the three still-not-quite-genin alone together on the roof.

"Hey wait! He didn't specify what time the test was!" Sakura complained.

Sasuke turned away and began walking off as he said, "Then just show up at sunrise and wait it out."

Sakura jogged after him to beg for a date and was shot down repeatedly.

'Typical.' Thought Naruto, 'They don't even consider me at all. Oh well, I suppose that will work out better for me in the end anyways.'

He leaned back into the shade of a well and then sunk right into it, vanishing completely.

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><p>Naruto emerged out of a shadow inside his room, having traveled for 10 minutes by moving from shadow to shadow to get there. 'That's a fun trick, but I need much more practice to increase the distance I can move in a single jump.'<p>

As he prepared himself a cup of ramen, he thought over how much things had changed for him since the day of the graduation exam. That forbidden scroll of seals had changed his life and he wasn't sure whether it was in a good way or not. He was sure though that he would need to be extra careful about keeping his secrets from now on since they could cost him his life if they were found out.

'Hmm… I know Shikamaru's clan specializes in manipulating shadows, maybe I can ask him for help sometime. The shadow teleport is cool and all but I can't really think of what else to do with a shadow. Maybe I just need some inspiration.'

He spent the rest of the day much the same as he had all the others since graduation: going out to the forest of death and practicing with his newfound abilities and techniques until he could barely stand before coming back home for sleep.

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><p>Naruto didn't really need to sleep as much anymore as he used to, but it passed the time and it allowed him to heal up faster so he kept to the same kind of sleep schedule as before. He awoke on the day of the 'True Final Exam' feeling refreshed and fully healed, just as always.<p>

'Alright, I wore the orange jumpsuit up until today just for nostalgias sake, but since this is a new chapter in my life I should start off with some new clothes.'

Naruto was enjoying his newfound vocabulary that better allowed him to describe his thoughts. It was just one of the many interesting ways his talents had been developing ever since that night. One could even go so far as to say that developing his talents had become one of the largest parts of his life.

His shadow then rose up off the ground and engulfed his entire body, and then seemed to harden into the form of clothes before it retreated to its normal position on the floor, leaving behind a traditional fully black shinobi outfit including a lower face mask. Over the top of that was a black cloak that included a hood that cast sufficient shadow over his eyes to keep them from being seen.

"Ah, that should do nicely." 'My practice in hardening shadows and chakra into temporary objects is paying off a bit already. These clothes won't provide me any more protection than a thin cotton shirt would but they are immune to the elements and cannot be easily damaged since they aren't made of any real material.'

"I wish I could make something other than black though…. Oh well, maybe with more practice."

With those final remarks, he packed up his equipment (a benefit of having cloths made of chakra is that you can make pockets wherever you want and however deep you want) and sunk down into his shadow.

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><p>When Naruto arrived at the training ground, there was no one there. He decided to get some last minute experimentation in and so he went a little ways into the forest in order to be able to train without being easily spotted while still being able to keep an eye out for his teammates and sensei.<p>

Sasuke and Sakura showed up an hour or so later and didn't notice him so he didn't bother to advertise his presence. About 5 hours after that (sometime around noon), Kakashi showed up in a puff of smoke.

"Yo!" he said, waiting to see how they would react to his lateness. 'It's always so fun to rile kids up.'

"YOU'RE LATE!" Sakura yelled while pointing accusatorily at her sensei, "you said the test was in the morning and it's the middle of the afternoon!"

Sasuke grunted. He was not amused that he had wasted many hours that he could have spent training waiting for his sensei to show up. The only reason he hadn't just trained anyway was because he didn't want to tire himself out right before a practical test.

Naruto casually walked out of the forest where he had been making some decent progress with trying to harden the air under his feet in order to walk in the air. It was a difficult task that was made all the more challenging by the fact that the hardened air turned back into normal air at the slightest disturbance which kept him from being able to get a decent jump off of it yet.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the completely different outfit that Naruto had decided to wear today, but he didn't say anything since he didn't want to give the blonde the idea that he wanted him to go back to wearing the orange jumpsuit.

Sasuke and Sakura were surprised to see him there, but also didn't say anything. Mostly it was because they didn't want to admit that they hadn't sensed the class dobe until he decided to reveal himself.

"I'm sorry I'm late. A black cat crossed my path and I had to go all the way around the village to avoid it!" Kakashi said with a cheerful eye smile.

Sakura mumbled about lame excuses for a bit and Kakashi decided that he had messed with them enough for now. Time to start the test. He pulled an alarm clock out of his bag and set it down on a rock next to three training poles.

"Ok, here is how this is going to work. I have two bells and you three have one hour to try and get them from me. Whoever has a bell at the end of the time limit passes and gets to eat one of these lunches I brought with me. Anyone who doesn't have a bell at the end gets tied to a pole, gets no lunch, and gets sent back to the academy. Any questions?"

"But sensei there are only two bells and three of us!" Sakura pointed out.

"Yes, one of you will fail for certain. It is a moot point of course since I doubt any of the three of you will pass. Oh, and the clock already started ticking."

The three were startled by that announcement that one of them would surely fail, but all three immediately fled to take up positions in hiding when they realized that they were already wasting time.

'I can still sense two of them but I have no idea where Naruto is. I suppose those comments I keep hearing about evading ANBU in broad daylight after massive pranks have some merit to them.'

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><p>Naruto knew that he had no chance against a jounin in a straight up fight, however he had a great deal of experience tricking them and sneaking around even before he gained his new abilities that made his stealth even better. He decided to stick to the insides of the shadows where there were no traces of his presence and to sneak a bell while Kakashi was distracted by one or both of his teammates.<p>

He noticed Kakashi heading off in Sakura's direction at high speed, and proceeded to shadow hop his way over there.

He arrived in the area just as Sakura was falling victim to a genjutsu.

As Kakashi was standing over Sakura, a large fireball came crashing down in his direction and Naruto saw his chance.

The direction that the fireball came from caused a new shadow to appear right behind Kakashi, who was distracted by both the fireball and by moving to pick up Sakura to get her out of the way. Naruto quickly moved to Kakashi's shadow and reached out of it to grab the bells just as Kakashi was kneeling down to pick Sakura up.

He managed to grab the bells, but he also got a hard kick to the face when Kakashi immediately felt the bells go missing.

He had caught the elite jounin completely off guard with his maneuver and so was nailed with full strength. He sailed through the air and bounced off of a tree hard but he was unconscious almost immediately after the kick so he didn't feel it.

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><p>"Well look who's awake now."<p>

Naruto woke up and the first thing he heard was the voice of his eccentric teacher.

He felt around for the bells but couldn't find them.

"Never mind about the bells Naruto, you managed to get them and you did it with the help of your teammates which was the point of the test. I am not exactly pleased with the way Sasuke gambled with his teammate's life that I would move to defend her." The jounin's eye narrowed slightly at the last Uchiha, who looked away and kicked at the dirt a bit. He felt a little guilty but it had seemed like a reasonable gambit at the time. It worked didn't it?

Sakura was already awake and had been told about what happened already. She didn't seem very upset about being used as bait. She probably was just too happy to have passed the test to care.

Naruto stayed silent and Kakashi narrowed his eye at him as he went over the whole short encounter in his head once more. 'He must have snuck up on me just as the fireball came down, but I didn't sense him at all until I felt the bells get tugged loose. I probably should have been more careful not to kick him so hard but he caught me totally unaware which is a very difficult thing to do. Oh well, he seems to be ok anyway. Advanced stealth skills can only come in handy later I suppose.'

"Ah well, were officially team 7 now. Please meet here every day from now on at 8am to train and take missions. Later!" he pulled out a little orange book and waved as he walked off.

Sasuke turned and walked off in another direction and was followed by Sakura who once again began pestering him for a date.

Naruto was left alone in the training field with a mongering headache and his thoughts. 'Well, I certainly impressed him with that shadow grab back there, but I was instantly put out of commission with one kick. I had no hope of blocking that. I need to work on some way to handle opponents who outclass me in speed and power.'

He ventured into the forest of death as usual and experimented with all manner of theories and techniques. He had decided that he would be much better off creating his own versions of any techniques he would need because a predictable ninja is a dead ninja and it's hard to be predictable when none of your moves have ever been seen before.

Since it was a full moon that night, he didn't bother to sleep, knowing that he would be too invigorated by the moonlight to even try. He trained all through the night, but made only marginal progress on his air stepping technique. He resolved to do some more research to see if he was missing something in his theory.

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><p>AN: There you have it. I am looking forward to reviews and critiques. I'll probably continue with this for a while regardless, but the level of interest will definitely be a factor in how much time I put into this story. Let me know what you think!<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

I'm encouraged by the reviews that I've gotten already for just the first chapter. I have noticed that a good deal of them ask for more information on what happened on the night of the genin graduation tests, and I'm afraid that I have to be mean and say that you will just have to keep reading to find things like that out! There will be hints dropped and clues given, but I will not come right out with a flashback or a complete explanation until I am ready. If you are impatient, then you will just have to try and figure out the stories secrets on your own. Everyone who guesses something correctly before it happens will get a shout out at the end of the chapter that it's revealed in. One guess per review (per chapter) though to keep it fair.

On with the story!

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><p>After a full night of training and experimentation, a somewhat tired Naruto returned home to his apartment to grab some ramen before he headed out to meet up with his new team for their first day of missions. He would never get tired of ramen, it didn't really matter that the delicious noodles now provided him even less sustenance than before.<p>

He was surprised to find a small rectangular package on his table. There was a note on top which read:

_I think it's time that you learned to do more with your power than parlor tricks. This book should give you a helpful nudge in the right direction._

_~R.A.~_

Curious, Naruto opened the package to find a thin book bearing the title _"Mana and Ki: An Introduction to Power Manipulation"_.

If the note had any other signature at the bottom, Naruto would have been surprised and wary of mysterious packages showing up in his room without any of his traps or warning alarms being set off. However, this was not the first time that the mysterious R.A. had left him a note with a small bit of advice. He had been receiving such notes throughout most of his life, and the advice had never steered him wrong before.

The advice had been especially helpful with dealing with the events that transpired a few weeks ago…

He eyed the small book with no small amount of interest. Only once before had he received a gift from R.A., another small book that had taught him just enough about the art of stealth that he was able to expand on them to the point that he could evade most ANBU for at least a few hours if he had time to plan his escape out beforehand.

He flipped the book open to the introduction to get an idea of what he was looking at.

_All living beings contain energy. From the grass on the ground to the animals that roam the forest to every last sentient creature out there, humans included, all of them contain both energy and the potential to harness it. Most beings out there, lacking the intelligence or interest to experiment with these energies, end up using the absolute minimum required to keep themselves alive and functioning. That is just so much wasted potential._

_This internal energy can be divided into two forms: the physical energy known as Ki, and the spiritual energy known as Mana. Ki can be harnessed to empower the body: increasing such attributes as strength, speed, stamina, physical defense, pain tolerance and more. Some adept Ki wielders even develop greater abilities such as flight or directing Ki externally into attacks in the form of blades or balls of energy. While Ki is an energy that is greatly attuned towards physical empowerment, Mana is an energy that allows the wielder to impose their will on the outside world, so long as the wielders will is strong enough, they have a very solid and detailed idea of what they want to do, and they have enough Mana to do it._

_It is very important to always member the factors that limit use of Ki and Mana. The primary limitations have to do with the natural order of all things. _

_You can use Ki to empower your body a great deal, but the exact amount you can increase your attributes is directly proportional to your true physical limits. There is an exponential increase in the amount of Ki required to safely increase your abilities past a certain multiple of your true physical prowess. This limit can be ignored if the Ki wielder is willing to suffer extreme damage to their body, or even death, once the power up wears off. _

_You can use Mana to impart your will upon the world, but the outside world has natural laws and Mana of its own to enforce them. The greater your will conflicts with the natural order of things, the more difficult it will be to enforce and the more Mana will be required to enforce it. If you desire to manipulate a nearby lake so that the water is directed to attack an enemy, the Mana cost and difficulty will be much lower than if you desire for such a thing to occur when there is no water nearby at all. In that case, you must pay a Mana cost to summon the water from elsewhere, as well as the cost for manipulating it too behave in ways that defy nature._

_All of the natural rules of the world are enforced by the ambient natural Mana that permeates the world, and if you have a strong enough will, a keen enough focus, and enough Mana than all of the world's laws can be turned on their head at least for a short while. The amount of ambient Mana is not the same in all areas, and there are some places which, by chance or by design, have much less protection for the laws of nature. These places are where the greatest magic can be wrought._

_Ki and Mana can be mixed internally to form a kind of energy that has some properties of both (ie: allows for some physical enhancement and also allows the laws of nature to by slightly overturned), but this is not recommended as the total amount and ratio of Ki to Mana used must be very precise in order for these energies to be properly manipulated. Since manipulating your inner stores of Ki and Mana causes them to grow over time the more they are used, utilizing this method of mixing the energies will naturally be much more difficult for those with large energy reserves, those who have much more of either Ki or Mana, and even those who use the mixture regularly. _

_If you decide to mix Ki and Mana in such a manner, it is recommended that you take the time to regularly fine tune your control to keep the mixture usable, since it becomes much harder to use Ki or Mana alone after using the mixture exclusively for a long period of time._

Naruto was amazed. This was an incredible book that held the kind of information that he desperately desired about chakra manipulation! Apparently chakra was a mixture of Ki and Mana, and someone a long time ago must have decided that ninjas would only use chakra for some reason. He could immediately see that he probably had many natural reasons why it was so hard for him to control his chakra, such as his large reserves and the Kyuubi unbalancing everything, and he only wished he could have had access to a book like this sooner!

Now that he knew that he had natural issues with wielding chakra, he decided that he would experiment with separating his own back into its Ki and Mana components since apparently those energies had no issues that he could see so far with his own large reserves.

He would see if he could master using these more basic energies. If all the other ninja were going to be using chakra, than would the odds be that they were prepared to deal with a shadow teleporting Mana wielder?

Once again, the least predictable ninja would be the most dangerous ninja.

As it turned out, D-ranked missions were nothing more than chores. Oh sure, a good deal of them were made much easier by applying ninja techniques and technically there was an opportunity to develop teamwork but really it was the ninja equivalent of hazing the new rookies.

Team practice was a bust; all that ever happened was that Kakashi drilled them with teamwork exercises such as throwing balloons and eggs to each other blindfolded and they were given vague instructions to keep themselves in shape.

They would do two or three D-ranks which would take maybe six hours total, then another two hours' worth of team practice and then they were let go for the day and told to meet up tomorrow at the same spot.

To be fair, it was standard procedure for fresh genin teams to go through a month long period where they did nothing but D-ranks and generic team exercises without being taught anything new for a couple of valid reasons.

The first and most important was to see which genin would take it upon themselves to train and improve their skills on their own time, and which genin would treat their new career as a day job. It was very important to catch that thing early and then take steps to eliminate such a mindset, as it would easily get a young ninja killed to be so carefree and lax in their approach to the ninja life. This wasn't a game anymore.

Another reason was loyalty. In general, even though it is very possible to train a young shinobi up with jounin level skills, it was frowned upon to give such power to someone so young who hadn't yet proven their loyalty to the village. This wasn't to say that they weren't trusted because they would have been removed from the shinobi academy at the first sign of potential disloyalty, it's just that there are too many ways for things to go wrong by giving powerful weapons to untested soldiers.

So basically, it became very clear to Naruto early on that he would need to spend all of his spare time improving himself if he wanted to get any better, because he sure wasn't going to become strong just by going on 'missions' and attending 'team training'.

That suited Naruto just fine, since he had recently come upon a great source of training material that he didn't want anybody to know about anyway.

He spent a great deal of his time that month out in the Forest of Death. He had learned a lot from that little book and he had a lot of ideas he wanted to work on. The book had been short and to the point, explaining the ins and outs of accessing your Mana and Ki and giving examples of how they could be used and what factors would make any specific application require more or less energy, focus, and practice. The book had claimed that with enough experience and power it was possible to create new moves on the fly for any given situation, but Naruto wasn't going to risk that kind of thing until he had been using it for a while and even then only if the situation called for it.

He didn't want to look like a fool in the middle of a fight by trying to create a fireball or something for the first time. That kind of thing could get you killed.

He was really eager to start experimenting with Mana. Ki sounded pretty useful, but a little too straightforward to rely on too much. The nature of Mana enthralled him, the very idea that he could make something that he wanted to happen just because he desired it caused him no small amount of anticipation.

Unfortunately for Naruto, it would take him two weeks to consistently separate his chakra into Mana and Ki, and an additional week before he could consistently call upon one or the other. While it bugged him that it took so long, he consoled himself with the thought that it would have taken much longer if he hadn't already learned how to call upon his chakra.

And so, finally having access to his Mana, he started to experiment. After a few amusing applications that demonstrated that he was doing it right (causing a fisherman to get slapped in the face by fish repeatedly was fun, and making the Thirds tobacco disappear from inside his pipe while he was smoking it was something he'd never forget), he decided to settle down and try to create something that would help him in a fight.

Now, the book had told him that an important part of using Mana to manipulate reality was having a very good idea of what you want to happen. Using a specific set of gestures and a name for a technique or spell would be a great aid in using magic because it would distinguish one spell from another. It would also help with focus; otherwise you might get distracted halfway through and have something entirely unwanted happen instead of the original goal.

Naruto interpreted this as justification for kickass sounding attack names and dramatic poses, which while technically correct, were not very stealthy or ninja like but then again he never planned to be a conventional ninja anyway.

And so, he spent his days (and some of his nights) trying to see what awesome things he could do with his new powers over Mana…

Of course, the first thing that he tried to do was fly. Now, he managed to achieve this after a short while but since he was using Mana to bend the laws of nature rather than using Ki to improve his physical abilities this ended up costing him quite a lot of Mana to maintain. He had massive amounts though, so he didn't really mind since flying was awesome but he realized that it wouldn't be practical to always be flying when on a mission since it was so taxing.

He managed to solve his problem with standing on the air though by lowering the force of gravity on himself and standing on particles of dirt in the air, which was something. It cost much less Mana to do, a negligible amount really, and the only downside was that he would go flying a stupidly far distance if he was hit while weighing so little so that was something to work on.

He developed the ability to coat his body in a thin and invisible layer of Ki. This would make him take much less damage when he mastered it, but at the moment it wouldn't stop much more than a scratch which could probably come in handy against a poisoned weapon or something.

The book made sure to mention many times that the more unlikely something was, or the more it went against the natural order, the more difficult it would be to make something happen. Well, as it just so happened Naruto had discovered, through a strange series of events, that it was very easy to influence probability. As in, really **really** easy. So easy in fact that he had been doing it all his life. He always thought that he was just really lucky but apparently he had been unconsciously manipulating insignificant matters of chance in his favor, most likely because he thought that he never got a break or something. He wondered if there was anyone out there who subconsciously manipulated probability in different ways… like someone who didn't think they deserved to win at cards so they never did… or someone who always ended up in perverted situations…

Anyway, the point that Naruto took from all that was that it was easy, fun, and good practice of his Mana manipulation to make small chance events happen around him for his own amusement. Since chance events are already within the bounds of what is naturally possible, almost no Mana was required to influence such things.

He experimented with many other things, with some successes and some failures but he eventually hit a wall were he couldn't move forward without testing his ideas out on others. He couldn't practice with his teammates since he didn't want any of them to know what he could do or get curious about him, which meant that he would need field experience. In other words, a real mission.

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><p>At the end of the month, as his team reported for their daily missions, Uzumaki Naruto decided to give fate a little push by using his Mana with the intent to get a mission that would give him a chance to test himself. It worked.<p>

"Team 7 reporting for duty Hokage-sama." Kakashi announced, half reading his orange book as he waited for the expected D-rank mission. He was disappointed.

The Third Hokage carefully observed the group before him. Kakashi looked bored, Sakura looked resigned, Sasuke looked impatient to get things over with, and Naruto seemed anxious. He was probably desperate to get out of the village and go on a "real mission". He smirked to himself. The boy had changed somewhat since the day of graduation, but he was still as eager to prove himself as ever. That would probably never change.

He looked down at the list of pending missions and decided that they could try a C-rank mission and if it went well their mandatory probationary period would be over. 'Hmm… a bridge in the land of waves? That will work nicely. I've been hearing things about that place lately. I'll have Kakashi do a little recon while we have the excuse to have our ninja openly in their country.'

"I have decided that today you will receive your first C-rank mission." The Hokage announced, satisfied by how excited the team before him looked at the prospect of 'real ninja work'.

Naruto was overjoyed that his first attempt to manipulate something important had seemed to succeed. This manipulating reality stuff was great! The book had warned that he should be very careful what he desired when he worked magic, but really he had been pretty straight forward.

He wanted an awesome mission where he could really push himself to the limit, and he got one. What's the worst that could happen?


End file.
